This Easy Hack Can Improve Your Candidate Experience and Make You a Better Interviewer

First, a quick history lesson: Back in the bell-bottomed boom days of cable TV, stations were desperate to differentiate themselves from the ever-growing competition. And to that end, WTBS — owned by Turner Broadcasting System, famous for launching CNN, TNT, and the Cartoon Network — employed an unusual tactic.

Rather than schedule its shows and movies at the top and bottom of the hour, as is the norm, WTBS started its programming at the :05 and :35 marks. This became known as “Turner Time,” and it was a big success. Once a show ended, viewers tended to stick around for the next one, as programming on other channels had already begun. 

What a difference five minutes can make!

Will Ducey agrees. The former head of technical recruiting at Toptal proposed an easy interview hack built around a five-minute delay.

“Has anyone experimented with starting interviews at five minutes past the hour?” he asked recently in a viral post on his LinkedIn page. Citing Parkinson’s Law, which states that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion, Will contended that scheduling back-to-back interviews leaves recruiters with little time to prepare, which in turn can lead to a crummy candidate experience.

“I'll continue to dream of a future when candidates join a Zoom ‘waiting’ room,” he added. There they’ll find engaging video content that may include the team’s objectives, interview topics, and even a short meditation to settle the candidate’s nerves. Once both parties are ready, they then join the meeting “and the positive experience continues.”

Responses came flooding in from the talent acquisition community. Most were positive (“LOVE THIS!”), others, lukewarm (“I don’t like to wait”). In a world where more and more job interviews happen virtually and harried hiring managers are forced to stack meetings, who doesn’t dream of a little baked-in breathing room? 

Back-to-back meetings = burnout

“Back-to-backs are the work of the devil,” commented an HR director in the United Kingdom. Though the sentiment may be a tad strong, her fundamental point is valid: Jumping from one meeting to the next isn’t just bad process — it’s also bad for your brain.

In a study captured in Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend Index Special Report, workers who attended back-to-back meetings without any breaks experienced higher levels of stress as well as a decreased ability to focus and engage.

“In today’s world of remote work, it’s not sufficient to only encourage self-care,” says Kathleen Hogan, the chief people officer at Microsoft. “We need to innovate and leverage technology to help employees operationalize much-needed breaks into their daily routines.”

A waiting room with a purpose

Of course, one person’s break is another person’s brainstorm. No sooner did Will suggest a five-minute buffer between meetings, than people quickly offered suggestions on how to fill that time. 

Meghan Shookman, a brand consultant in Austin, saw it as a perfect opportunity to debrief with your team. “Perhaps,” she wrote, “follow with a post-interview feedback session among colleagues to discuss the candidate” while the interview is still fresh. Will agreed that this could help speed up the decision-making process.

Indeed many were delighted with the interactive waiting room idea, especially the 60-second mediation. An administrator from Raleigh said it could help relieve pre-interview jitters, allowing candidates to show their best selves, while also illustrating “that your company sincerely lives out its values.” One recruiter proposed adding an uplifting song or joke to relax the candidate. 

Still, others worried that dumping candidates into a waiting room might send a mixed message. Mike Nicholson, a shipping consultant in the U.K., wondered if it could make them feel “shoe-horned” into a meeting with an overburdened interviewer. “I don’t think it would be calming.”

Worse, some believe the practice may be offensive. “Do you consider the time of your prospective hires to have zero value?” asked Brian Targonsky, a hardware engineer in San Francisco. He said that any built-in prep time for the interviewer should happen behind the scenes, invisible to the candidate. “Remember,” he wrote, “our candidates are also interviewing you, as a representative of the culture of your company.”

Final thoughts: It’s only a few minutes, but they’re critical minutes

A majority of the comments were from people who had already adopted some aspect of Will’s proposal into the interview process. Maybe the most practical example comes from someone, an educator, working in a field where many are all too familiar with burnout.

“I actually use a similar format for virtual parent-teacher conferences!” wrote Karissa Kist, a third-grade teacher in North Carolina. She sets it up so that parents enter the main room of a Google Meeting, where they’re presented with a short welcome video. 

“Meanwhile, I am conducting my conference in the adjacent breakout room,” she explained. Karissa makes sure to schedule five to 10 minutes of buffer time between meetings, after which she invites the next parent to join.

It’s only a few minutes, after all, but they’re an important few minutes. And like Diana Mitchell, a content marketer in Buffalo, said: “It worked for TBS . . . (if you know, you know).”

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